Countdown to Love
by phantomwriter05
Summary: An undercover mission turn into a crazy night of alcohol related strange behavior. One Shot.


_**This is left of the right way a super serious chapter of a super serious story was going. **_

**Countdown to Love**

This was supposed to be easy, with nothing that was supposed to be dangerous. Meet up with the Japanese programmers, the ones that beat the Turk at the Chess Tournament. Make contact, talk with them, and see how that government contract was going. Sarah was in a shiny silk blouse with three buttons down, a nylon pushup bra just visible, flirting with every one of them. Cameron with a tight cowgirl shirt hems tied under her chest, short leather skirt.

They were better than mortal man deserved … But apparently nerds weren't mortal men … they weren't men at all. This was what frustrated Sarah more than anything, Cameron saw. Their targets were stammering when approached. Both tried to hold conversations with the Programmers, but often found themselves being the only one talking. Sarah had got frustrated enough to announce to them that Life was going to be hard for them if they can talk to mother boards but not women.

Cameron wasn't sure what made Sarah angrier, the stammering and socially retarded ice breakers, or the fact that the minute John walked in and started talking about processors and … well nerd things, they all started talking up a storm. There were three way conversations, inside Jokes. Sarah who spent an hour on her hair and makeup and was genuinely hoping for a night out was disgusted. Several angry phone calls late they were picked up by a bitter Derek who was forced to accompany Sarah on a secret detour after dropping Cameron home.

The cyborg had been home for a couple of hours, hoping that leaving John alone wasn't a mistake. They hadn't been talking at all. In fact she had offered to stay only to have her offer shot down in a glare of daggers. She wished things could go back to the way they were before his birthday, even just before the night he left for Mexico. There was something in his eyes when she said she was a machine and couldn't be happy. Maybe that was what it was that hurt him? Did John want to make her happy? Humans were complicated, she says one thing and tells him that it can never be, and somehow it's her fault and he spends the rest of his life blaming her for not being happy. Maybe if she smiled more, he'd spend so much less time with Riley, though truthfully she hadn't been around as much. Mexico was a real eye opener. Sarah claimed that John really cared about her, and the machine didn't know how to feel about that. Maybe it was good, maybe the less time John spent with Cameron, the less he would be unhappy, knowing that most of John's problem was wanting to be happy, just with the wrong girl, with a cyborg.

BEEP! BEEP!

"Hello?"

"_He… hey there hout stueff … you's making mistake!" _

Cameron stared at her phone, blinking. The voice was in broken English, with an Asian stutter, most likely Japanese.

"Hello?" She pushed again.

"_You's don't realize, the kind of maun you's giving up on!" _

"I don't know what you're talking about?" She frowned.

At her response the man on the other line could clearly be heard talking in Japanese to someone off phone.

"_I bet she would." _

"John? Tell John to come home." Cameron demanded of the man on the receiver. When her message was relayed there was a blown raspberry. _"You're not my wife!"_ He shouted.

"_Heh, this is boyz nighat out, bebe … we's getting our drink on!" _

The phone hung up, leaving Cameron without. She tightened her cheek and pressed the off button.

The hours passed and when there was a knock at the door, it was rather aggressive. Cameron moved from her room to the door quickly. She was confronted by an angry Riley Dawson and her foster father. In both their hands were rolls of toilet paper.

"Yes?"

"Did you do this?"

"Do what?"

Riley's foster father looked angry, but Riley looked about ready to burst. "Did you toilet paper our house?" He asked. The cyborg looked very confused at the question and tilted her head.

"Why would I need to toilet paper your house? It has no bowels." She continued. "And even if it did, I'm not it's nanny, it is old enough to clean itself." She glared.

"You think this is funny?"

"I really don't find anything humorous."

Riley growled in agitation. "Someone came and TPed the house and yelled liar at my window after throwing deviled eggs at it. I mean deviled eggs?! Who throws deviled eggs, man?!" She motioned with a rage to nothing in general, just an aggressive hand movement.

"How can eggs be associated with Satan worship, they're unhatched?"

"This isn't funny!"

"No, just improbable … chick fetuses don't have an understanding of the complicated concept of Heaven and Hell, much less a full grown chicken."

"It's a food arrangement!"

"Oh …"

Riley sighed with a gravely growl under it. "Do you know who did this?" She pushed.

Cameron was pensive. "Anyone who spends more than two hours with you?" the cyborg offered with a deadpan face.

Riley, filled with outrage sprang at Cameron, but was caught by her foster father and torn away, while the machine cocked her head with sudden dangerous eyes, like a territorial bird of prey, provoked. Struggling out of her foster father's hold she looked ready to burst.

"You may not have thrown the eggs, but I know you have something to do with it …" the older man began dragging her away, telling her how Cameron wasn't worth it. "You haven't heard the last of this, Dead Head!" She called over her Foster Guardian's shoulder.

"Probably not, you tend to recycle stories."

"You're asking for it, you screwy bitch!" She called in a fit.

Just as the man was forcing Riley toward the end of the tiled front porch and to the accent of the descending stairs, they met Sarah and Derek. Sarah was for some reason now wearing a 20's flapper's dress, and a Carnival Mask. While Derek had Hawaiian lays around his neck and a big fancy sombrero on his head. He had Sarah by the waist, holding her up and three bags of fast food in the other. Both held big soda cups.

"Excuse me!" The foster dad stopped them. "Do you know what your Daughter just did?!" He asked with a rancor mixed with superior attitude of a tattle tale.

Without warning Sarah reared back and hit the man with a closed fist, knocking him down. She dipped in Derek's arms for a moment, before finding her feet.

"Be grateful it wasn't that." Derek grunted supporting Sarah as they moved on.

They both found their way to the door. Confronted by Cameron, she tilted her head. "Why did you hit him?" She asked. Sarah pushed her mask up to her forehead and wobbly turned back and blinked hard as if trying to get the pile of limps on the front steps in focus.

"I don't know …" She frowned. "What did he do?" Her voice was slightly slurred.

"Nothing …"

"Welp …" Sarah lifted her eyebrows and took a big breath. "I guess he knows not to do it again." She blew out into a giggle, sharing a dependent grin with Derek as they pushed inside the house.

"Wait." Cameron stopped them, Removing her phone from her back pocket and snapped a picture of the two of them together. They both didn't seem happy about it.

Cameron didn't tell Sarah or Derek that John wasn't home yet. She didn't want to get John in trouble with Sarah. Also the fact that she was standing in the kitchen watching, Sarah Connor and Derek Reese the best soldiers in the resistance, eating three bags of fast food together in costumes in the kitchen island spoke to a feeling they weren't in a condition to deal with John.

"_Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, three, four, two, one." _

"_No … It's ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, FOUR, three, two, one!" _

"_Ooooh, hahahaha!"_

"_Okay again." _

Suddenly there was a chorus of voices in a acapella rhythm of voices before they start singing. Cameron began looking around, while, Derek and Sarah stopped eating only a moment, before they began eating again with duel shrugs. Leaving the kitchen, Cameron stalked up the stairs, back to her room, finding the best view of the yard from her window.

"_Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one  
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one  
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one  
Countdown to love"_

Below, she found John snapping his fingers in a huddle with the entire team of Japanese Programmers, copying the motion. It was obviously that were well versed with harmony, just not English harmony. With a glare and tightened cheek, she walked out of the room and outside to the balcony. Once she was outside they broke apart and John began to sing, the tone was good, quietly soothing even for a drunken serenade.

"_Ten"_

"_Remember when you didn't love me?"_

"_Nine"_

"_Now all the time you're thinking of me"_

"_Eight"_

"_Life is great, you're all I'm living for"_

"_This is my countdown to rwove, oh, oh"_

"_This is my countdown to love"_

"_You are the one love in my life  
I know you feel that way too  
Oh, what a thrill when I'm holding you near  
All of my wild dreams come true"_

"Three"

"_Forever more you'll be my lover"_

"_Four"_

"_It's you for me, there'll never be another"_

"Two"

"_Together four ever we'll be as one"_

"This is my countdown to rwove, oh, oh"

"_This is my countdown to love."_

They were slightly off pitch and the fact that the Japanese programmers despite a barber shop acapella group while at Kyoto University didn't know English all that well, judging that they kept getting four and three in confusion, still somehow pulled it off. She watched in confusion as they all spun in sequence and wore sunglasses despite it being four in the morning. Cameron was confused, but not really surprised. In the future John often celebrated events when drunk by singing songs in acapella groups comprised of the members of the inner circle, sometimes even drunkenly serenading Skynet on unsecure channels.

In what she knew of this practice of the balcony serenade, she knew it was supposed to be a romantic gesture. The last several months had been hard on John and Cameron's relationship, with John's birthday, and what happened in the church before he met Riley … and Riley. Maybe he was saying sorry, maybe he was saying that he wanted it to go back to the way it was? But she knew he wanted something else, drunk, and out of his sane state of mind, he was showing her what she knew he wanted from the very beginning. He didn't know it … but she wanted it too. What do people do, what do they become when they're supposed to spend their lives together? That was what she was going to do … that's what she's supposed to do, she didn't need programming or reprograming to tell her that. But she was a body guard, and what she felt was irrelevant to what the mission was.

But just this once, she betrayed a smile for him. The smile was enough for the Japanese Programmers to rush up to John and encourage him with pats to the back and teasing with wolf whistles. Suddenly the front porch light came on and Sarah appeared with a pistol hand.

"It's the fun police, everyone scatter!"

* * *

The late afternoon was as quiet as the rest of the day. Cameron had been wandering from room to room with rehydration fluid. No one could move or get out of bed all day. Sarah and Derek who apparently would take their shared adventure to the grave had crashed together on the couch surrounded by fast food wrappers and large ounce sodas. John was stuck on Cameron's bed since he had fell out of the too small bed over and over again. When she found him, he had been so upset he looked as if he was getting ready to physically fight the eight year old child's bed.

When she entered the room John had his eyes open, but he didn't seem to believe he was actually alive. She crossed his sight line placing a silver tray on the nightstand, even the slightest tap of the metal, made him squeeze his eyes in pain.

"Sorry …"

"Evil …"

His companion blinked. "What?"

"Evil … Fake ID's and Sake … they're evil." He said in a laconic voice.

She nodded. "And illegal." She agreed.

"It's too late for me, Cameron … learn from my mistakes lest you travel the same dark path I have. Keep pure and innocent and stay on the light side of the force." He seemed dazed and yet strangely serious.

She pouring him a glass of cloudy liquid and handed it to him. While he strained to lift his arm, she filled a hot pad with warm water. She ignored the disgusted nasal reactionary noise after John's first taste.

"Is this safe to drink?"

"No, I'm trying to kill you."

"…"

"I fooled you again."

"I wish you weren't."

"Just drink it." She almost snapped at his tone.

He glared at her, but sipped and made a gaging noise. Her response was a less than a gentle smack of a hot pad against his head. The noise was half agonizing, half pure relief. He put a hand over hers as he sank into the bed with a sigh of content, pressing pad and slender hand against his head. Setting down the glass he scooted over for her. Slipping on top of the bed, she gently laid John's head across her lap.

"Ugh … you're an Angel." he sighed rubbing her hand affectionately.

She watched him, relishing the physical contact. She liked to think of it as a preview of coming years, when it would just be the two of them.

"Cameron?"

"Yes?"

"I uh … well, you wouldn't know if I did anything stupid last night? Cause my hands smell like hardboiled egg and paprika."

"Couldn't say." She lied emotionlessly.

"As long as it's not on public record I guess I don't need a record right?" he laughed till he let out a sob of pain.

As the minutes passed, Cameron felt a little stung over it. Sure it wasn't wise for them to pursue feelings or romantic gestures. But she wouldn't have minded if he at least remembered something, even if they never talked about it again.

She stayed with him till he settled and it was time to check on Sarah and Derek. Quietly, slipping from under John's head and hand, she placed his head gently on her pillow and began stalking out of her room, tray in hand. Suddenly John began to hum a very familiar tune under his breath, so slight it would've been hard for anyone else to hear. Cameron whirled to find John, hot pad still over his eyes, but a grin on his face as he hummed.

Cameron responded with a big smile as she walked away.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_**I'm an Ass ...**_

_"Countdown to Love (Acapella) - Streets of Fire soundtrack" _


End file.
